HELP with USB midi interface!

[Jamez0r]

I'm trying to figure out what USB interface to purchase. I want the piece of equipment to have enough ports for my electronic drumset (stereo), a guitarist, bassist, and microphone.
I'm not really sure where to start looking, or exactly what this piece of equipment is called. I have Cakewalk Sonar Producer Edition, but no MIDI-out... so I can't hear anything when I try to play it back.

Am I doing something wrong? What piece of equipment do you recommend, or where can I go to get a list of good interfaces that I can look through?

THANKS!!!

 

[AlChuck]

Sounds like you need an audio interface. You can record MIDI messages from the electronic drums, no doubt, but MIDI ports won't help with recording guitar, bass, and vocals.

I get the impression that perhaps you are under the common misperception that MIDI carries digitized audio around from one device to another.

If you want to record bass, guitar, vocals each with its own audio track simultaneously (that is, without overdubbing), you'll need at least 4 analog audio inputs. If you have a mixer already all you need are line level inputs, but if not you'll probably want something that has mic preamps on a pair of the inputs. You could use the MIDI port to record the MIDI messages from your e-drums.